Low self-esteem in eating disordered patients in the absence of depression

Both low self-esteem and depression are well recognised as occurring in patients with eating disorders. 43 patients with eating disorders were studied to assess whether this low self-esteem occurred as part of an affective disorder or was independent of this. The patients, 23 with anorexia nervosa and 20 with bulimia nervosa, were assessed for low self-esteem, using the Rosenberg Self-esteem Questionnaire, and for depression, using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. The patients had low self-esteem, despite only a minority (33%) being depressed. This study demonstrates that low self-esteem occurs in patients with eating disorders in the absence of depression.     

Birth order and fear of success among midadolescents

While among 194 high school students 79 first-borns showed less fear of negative consequences of academic success than 78 last-borns and 37 middle-borns, no differences were observed on fear of increased positive attention or of increased responsibility.     

Men's perception of premenstrual changes on the premenstrual assessment form

Outcome research has shown that partner-spouse support can enhance the therapeutic outcome in a number of clinical problems. In the area of premenstrual tension, studies of treatment have apparently overlooked this issue of partners' support. This study was designed to address how men perceive premenstrual changes. 99 undergraduate men were asked whether they believed that women had premenstrual changes reflected on the 18 unipolar scales of the Premenstrual Assessment Form. Responses suggest that young men acknowledge that some women experience dysphoric features like hostility, mood swings, and low self-esteem as well as physical discomfort and behavioural changes. Clinical implications are outlined.     

Affective influences on individual and group judgments

Do emotional states influence the social judgments made by groups and individuals? Based on affect-cognition theories and research on group judgmental shifts, we predicted that group discussion will enhance positive mood effects on judgments, but inhibit affectively-based distortions in dysphoric moods. Positive, neutral and negative moods were induced using audiovisual presentations. Individual and group consensus judgments of nine person categories on three judgmental dimensions (evaluation, competence and self-confidence) were obtained in two experimental sessions separated by a two-week interval. Results showed that individuals made more positive judgments when happy, and more negative judgments when sad than did controls. Group discussion resulted in a further polarization of positive judgments, and the attenuation of negative judgments. The findings are interpreted as evidence for the important role affect plays in mediating both individual cognitive processes and interactive social behaviours. The implications of the results for contemporary affect-cognition theories and models of group behaviour are considered.     

An on-line assessment of causal reasoning during comprehension

Fletcher and Bloom (1988) have argued that as readers read narratives, clause by clause, they repeatedly focus their attention on the last preceding clause that contains antecedents but no consequences in the text. This strategy allows them to discover a causal path linking the text's opening to its final outcome while minimizing the number of times long-term memory must be searched for missing antecedents or consequences. In order to test this hypothesis, we examined the reading times of 25 subjects for each clause of eight simple narrative texts. The results show that: (1) causal links between clauses that co-occur in short-term memory (as predicted by the strategy) increase the time required to read the second clause; (2) potential causal links between clauses that never co-occur in short-term memory (again as predicted by the strategy) have no effect on reading time; and (3) reinstatement searches are initiated at the end of sentences that are causally unrelated to the contents of short-term memory or that contain clauses that satisfy goals no longer in short-term memory. These results support the claim that subjects engage in a form of causal reasoning when they read simple narrative texts.     

The role of compliance in hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia

We modified the standard procedure for administering finger pressure pain in order to assess the extent to which subjects biased their reports of pain reduction when exposed to compliance-inducing instructions. Experiment 1 used only highly hypnotizable subjects and found that compliance-induced reductions in reported pain were about half as large as the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Experiment 2 used low as well as high hypnotizables and administered hypnotic or nonhypnotic analgesia instructions and compliance instructions to the same subjects on separate pain trials. Reported pain reductions produced by hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia suggestions and those produced by compliance instructions were substantially and significantly correlated. Furthermore, hypnotizability correlated with compliance-induced reported pain reductions as highly as it correlated with the reported reductions produced by hypnotic analgesia suggestions. Among high hypnotizables (but not low hypnotizables) compliant responding was predicted by social desirability. The findings of both studies indicate that compliance strongly influences the reports of hypnotic and nonhypnotic analgesia proffered by high hypnotizables. The role of compliance in the pain reductions reported by low hypnotizables is less clear-cut.     

Bilingual language processing after a lesion in the left thalamic and temporal regions. A case report with early childhood onset.

This case study concerns an 18-year-old bilingual girl who suffered a radiation lesion in the left (dominant) thalamic and temporal region when she was 4 years old. Language and memory assessment revealed deficits in auditory short-term memory, auditory word comprehension, nonword repetition, syntactic processing, word fluency, and confrontation naming tasks. Both languages (English and Dutch) were found to be affected in a similar manner, despite the fact that one language (English) was acquired before and the other (Dutch) after the period of lesion onset. Most of the deficits appear to be related to verbal (short-term) memory dysfunction. Several hypotheses of subcortical involvement in memory processes are discussed with reference to existing theories in this area.     

Pattern of language impairment is different in Alzheimer's disease and multi-infarct dementia.

Language impairment was assessed in 33 patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD), in 52 patients with multi-infarct dementia (MID), and in 86 elderly community residents. The investigation included the D-Test Battery based on the Luria's Neuropsychological Investigation for all subjects. An extended battery of Luria's language items was used for 30 demented patients (11 AD and 19 MID patients) and 86 controls. The changes in language functions in normal subjects could be clearly differentiated from those seen in patients with mild dementia. The patients with different degrees of dementia differed also significantly from each other in regard to language impairment. Moreover, patients with AD and MID appeared to have different patterns of language impairment although the severity of dementia and the levels of orientation, mnestic, and conceptual functions were equal. AD was associated especially with a defect in understanding of grammatical structures and MID with disorders in recognition of words, naming, and repetition. The differential diagnostic capacity of 23 selected language items proved to be 97% between AD, MID, and control subjects. The results indicate that the examination of language functions is valuable in the differential diagnosis of dementia.     

Aphasia in left-handers. Comparison of aphasia profiles and language recovery in non-right-handed and matched right-handed patients.

The present retrospective analysis reports two studies. In Study 1, clinical aspects of aphasia are compared in right-handed (RH) and non-right-handed (NRH) patients; in Study 2, recovery from aphasia is compared in RH and NRH aphasic patients with a minimum of 5 months of daily language rehabilitation. From a continuous series of 1200 brain-damaged subjects, 24 NRH patients with a vascular lesion documented by computerized tomography were selected. In 19 cases the lesion was in the left hemisphere and in 5 cases in the right hemisphere. For 14 NRH patients, a RH subject with similar lesion, matched for age, education, length of illness, etiology (ischemic vs. hemorrhagic), and, when possible, sex was found. Presence and type of aphasia were compared in the two patients of the same pair and were found similar except for Pair 14; the RH subject had global aphasia and the NRH had conduction-like aphasia. Fifteen NRH patients were rehabilitated and reexamined at least 5 months after the first examination. Recovery of the 12 patients with a left-hemisphere lesion was compared with recovery of a group of RH subjects and no significant differences were found. Recovery of the three patients with right-hemisphere lesions is described. It is concluded that differences in type of aphasia and recovery between RHs and NRHs have been overemphasized in the past and must be reconsidered.     

Naming consistency in Alzheimer''s disease

Although lexical semantic deficits are postulated to play a prominent role in the anomia of Alzheimer's disease, it is unclear whether the primary disturbance is one of lexical access or one of lexical semantic loss. Response consistency on a naming task is one means of evaluating the underlying source of naming impairment. Access dysfunction usually implies variable word-finding difficulty, while a theory of lexical loss predicts that many word names would be consistently unavailable. Nineteen Alzheimer's disease patients were administered a visual confrontation naming task (the Boston Naming Test) on two occasions 6 months apart. Eighty percent of errors occurred consistently at both times; only 20% of errors occurred on only one occasion. Response consistency occurred significantly more often than expected under the assumption of no response consistency. Findings support the hypothesis that anomia in Alzheimer's disease is in part due to a loss of lexical semantic information.